


Andy's Rule

by No_Illusions



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Andy is still immortal, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gen, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Rape/Non-con - Freeform, Team as Family, Whump, andy is very protective of her team but she knows when to ask for help, character death but they come back, i think that tag works for this, please pay attention to the warnings on this, please take care of yourselves everyone, regardless, seriously this fic is marked as explicit for a reason, someone suggested it but i've never used it before so i'm not quite sure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:41:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25929073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/No_Illusions/pseuds/No_Illusions
Summary: When the team is kidnapped, Nile learns the first rule of being kidnapped with Andy.Please read the warnings.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman
Comments: 7
Kudos: 157





	Andy's Rule

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: these characters do not belong to me
> 
> TW: rape/non-con, graphic violence, torture
> 
> A/N: I'm not totally happy with this story yet, but I've been messing with it for days now and I've given up, so I'm posting it anyways. So, enjoy, I guess.

Being captured, in one form or another, was an unfortunately common occurrence for them. That didn’t make it easier, and since Quynh and the witch trials, there had been an added layer of fear in the face of capture.

Joe woke first, jerking awake to find himself slumped on the ground, chained to a wall in what looked like an unfortunately cliche murder basement. He looked around frantically, until he saw Nicky to his right, chained like he was.

“Nicolo!” he called. “Nicolo, destati! Destati!” But the other man was already waking up. Joe saw the moment he jerked back into consciousness, eyes snapping up and scanning the room until they landed on Joe. 

“I’m okay,” said Nicky.

“Gas, I think,” Joe told him, and Nicky grimaced. He opened his mouth to reply until they were both distracted by movement to Nicky’s right.

It turned out to be Nile, beginning to stir, and both men focused on her. She was groggy still, and it wasn’t until she tried to move one of her legs only to find it cuffed to the other that she seemed to realize something was wrong, and her eyes snapped open as she woke up fully. Her breathing was heavy, panicked, and Joe realized that this was the first time she had been kidnapped. Not including that day Andy had found her, of course.

“Nile.” Nicky’s voice was calm and steady, and Nile’s head snapped around to look at him, eyes wide. 

“Nicky?” she asked, sounding scared. “Joe? Where are we?” 

Joe almost replied “Murder basement,” but bit his tongue just in time. His gallows humor would probably not be the best thing for her right now.

Just then, Nile focused on something in front of them, and her eyes widened even further. 

“Andy!” she exclaimed. Joe looked, and sure enough there was Andy, strapped to a metal table in the middle of the room, head lolling to the side away from them. She was still unconscious, Joe knew. They would know when she was awake. 

Ah well, best to get it over with before whoever had taken them showed up. 

“Andy,” Nicky called, obviously having the same thought. “Andromache, wake up now.” 

They all saw the moment Andy regained consciousness. Her entire body tensed as she registered that something was wrong, and she moved to sit up, only to be stopped by the straps that bound her to the table. Her eyes widened in blind panic, and she began to thrash, letting out an animalistic scream that sounded a bit like “No!” 

Nicky was still talking to her, but Joe knew Andy wasn’t hearing him. She was lost in her own hell, the one she always returned to when she first found herself captured: the witch trials, Quynh being dragged away from her, Andy helpless and unable to save her. 

“Andromache, we are here, we are here, it is ok, Andy, you are ok,” Nicky was saying. Still, Andy screamed that raw scream, the one that sounded like it was cutting up her throat as it forced its way out. Joe and Nicky knew that feral scream well. Andy had been like this after she had escaped, when Joe and Nicky had finally found her. She hadn’t spoken for nearly a month, had just screamed that scream and sobbed Quynh’s name. 

But Nile, Joe realized, had never heard it. None of them had been there when Andy was last captured, betrayed by Booker and brought to Merrick’s lab. He looked at the younger woman, craning his neck to see her around Nicky. Her eyes were locked on Andy, wide with horror. They should have warned her, Joe realized, before waking Andy. But it was too late now.

Then Nile flinched as a sharp crack sounded over the yelling. Joe glanced back at Andy, clenching his jaw when he realized that she must have snapped a bone somewhere with her thrashing. Luckily, the new pain seemed enough to bring her out of her flashback, and in a moment she had stopped yelling, breathing heavily as she regained control of herself, then wincing as her body healed.

“Andy, it is alright,” Nicky told her. 

Slowly, Andy rolled her head to look at them. Her eyes were dull and tired. “Nicky?” she asked, her voice cracked. 

“Yes, we are here.”

Her eyes moved to Joe, who nodded at her. “Here, Andy,” he said. 

“Andy?” The quiet voice was Nile’s, and Andy’s eyes widened momentarily as they snapped to the younger woman, some of the dullness clearing away. 

“Nile,” she said, sounding somewhat embarrassed. Nile’s eyes were still wide and horrified. Andy cleared her throat, and looked away momentarily before meeting Nile’s gaze. “I’m… sorry you had to see that. I… do not like being… trapped.” She swallowed. “Since….” 

“Since Quynh,” said Nicky quietly, meeting Nile’s eyes, which widened in understanding.

“Oh,” said Nile, looking back at Andy. A little hesitantly, she continued. “I’m sorry I tied you up that one time on the plane, then.”

Andy’s eyes crinkled and her body relaxed as she let out a huff of laughter. “That was a very ineffective attempt at kidnapping. I had a knife in my boot and you only restrained one of my arms. I just needed you to stop pointing your gun at the pilot, was all. Then I wanted to see if you’d actually jump out of the plane.” 

Nile scowled, but the men chuckled, and a bit of tension drained away from the room. 

Suddenly, Andy’s eyes locked with Nile’s again, her expression serious. “Nile. Listen. No matter what happens, you do not try to intervene or redirect focus onto yourself, do you hear me?” 

Nile blinked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Until we can get out of here, anything they do, anything they want, whether it’s answers or sport or just to cause pain. You do not try to redirect it towards yourself.”

Nicky sighed. “She’s very strict about this rule. It applies to all of us,” he told Nile. His face was tense and resigned. He had obviously fought Andy about this, and lost. 

Usually in an interrogation, focus was directed towards Andy anyway. Either because they knew she was the leader, or they assumed that because she was a woman she was weak, or that the others would tell them whatever they wanted to know just to save her from pain. There were other reasons too. She was gorgeous, of course, and that drew attention. She was defiant and strong, and often men wanted to break that. Regardless of the reasons, this suited Andy. She was the boss. She went through first. She took the first bullets, and she took the first beatings. Always. 

Nile, obviously still a bit confused, nodded slowly. “Okay, Andy.” 

Andy held her gaze a moment longer, then nodded her satisfaction. “Good.”

__

It was half an hour later, most of which time had been spent making concerted-yet-ineffectual efforts to get free of their chains, at the cost of a few broken fingers and wrists, that their captors finally showed themselves. 

They all froze at the sound, and Joe, Nicky, and Nile watched half a dozen men stream in, all heavily armed. Andy, who couldn’t see the door because it was behind her, just stared at the ceiling. She would see them soon enough, anyways. And sure enough, while the other five men positioned themselves near the door, one of them came up to stand beside Andy, keeping the table between himself and the rest of the team. 

He surveyed them all with hard, cold eyes. His gaze raked Andy’s body, and she gritted her teeth, noticing that the others also tensed. Then he smiled. 

“Are we doing this the easy way, or the hard way?” Andy almost sighed. These people were always walking cliches. She just looked at him, and saw him blink at her blank stare. 

“Who hired you?” The guy demanded. Andy didn’t bother to say anything. The problem with these situations was that, in a moment, the whole game would change. If she answered now, they would assume that she was lying (which she would be, but that was beside the point). People like this didn’t trust an answer that they hadn’t beaten out of somebody. But as soon as they started doing the beating, they were going to get real interested in why none of the injuries seemed to be sticking. And then it would no longer be about the questions. They would become lab rats in -- Andy suppressed a bitter smile -- what Joe would no doubt refer to later as a murder basement. 

But, if she played it right, she might be able to keep their attention on her long enough for an escape opportunity to present itself, without the others needing to get hurt. That was the idea, anyways. It sometimes even worked. 

Their opening move was an unimaginative and not-particularly-painful slap across the face. She hoped they hadn’t actually thought that that would be enough to make her talk. 

It was followed by a punch that was hard enough to snap her head to the side, so that she was looking towards her team as she spit out blood. All three of them had identical pained looks on their faces, jaws clenched, and she smiled at them. She knew her teeth and lips were covered in blood, but she let her eyes soften as she looked towards them. Nicky nodded back at her, face blank. Joe shot her a quick wink, and Nile just stared back, looking a bit scared. Andy turned her head away to stare up at the ceiling again.

After a couple more punches, they evidently decided that this would not be enough, and Cliche Guy nodded to one of his goons, who rolled over a nice cliche torture table, full of knives and saws and other tools meant to intimidate her. Andy hoped the torture table would still be here when they escaped. She hadn’t been having a particularly good day, and it was only looking like it would get worse, and a couple of those knives were about eight inches long. Perfect for the kind of messy, close-quarters fighting that would really improve her mood.

The goon started by cutting her shirt down the middle, not bothering to avoid cutting her skin as well. Blood welled up, staining the cloth, and Andy sighed.  _ Here we go. _ The guy peeled back her shirt, and froze. 

“Boss,” he said. Cliche leaned forward, and his mouth dropped open. 

“What the hell,” he whispered. Andy didn’t have to look down to see that the cut was already gone. It had been a shallow gash, meant merely to get her worried. “Try it again.”

The goon ran the knife over her stomach, this time digging deeper. Andy clenched her jaw, but couldn’t prevent the way her breath hitched at the pain. Once again, the two men stared intently, then Cliche swore. 

He grabbed a bigger knife then, as though somehow that would make a difference. It only took him a few more quick cuts to decide that no, the other guy had not somehow been doing it wrong, this woman really was healing in front of his eyes. 

His gaze shifted, and Andy recognized this moment. The game was changing. He looked at her now, and no longer saw a job, but a toy. 

Cliche stabbed down, and the knife pierced her side. He pushed the knife outwards slightly, as though trying to tug her skin away from her ribs. Andy grunted, fists clenched and neck arched as she rode the wave of pain. The knife was still in her side, and Cliche was moving it around now, widening the wound from the inside. Blood dripped onto the table. 

When he finally pulled it out, Andy sagged for a moment, catching her breath. She could feel her skin and muscle knitting back together, and she knew that within moments, the wound would be gone. 

Cliche was obviously very excited now, because he beckoned over the other guards, until they were crowded around her, leaning over her like she was an interesting bug on the sidewalk. Then more of them grabbed knives, and Andy braced herself. 

They started small. A few of the men traced patterns onto the skin of her stomach, only to watch intently as the skin knit together in front of their eyes. She was reasonably certain that at least one of them carved his name. Andy kept her eyes locked on the ceiling, focusing on breathing. 

Then they switched to cutting strips of skin from her sides, and Andy could no longer bite back small sounds of pain. She had been skinned alive before, once, and it had not been pleasant. This wasn’t quite that bad, but it still hurt, and there would never be anything not painful about feeling strips of skin pulled away from muscle. The men watched her intently as one of them tossed aside a six-inch strip of skin.

“What the hell? Andy!” she heard Nile exclaim. Andy turned her head to glare at the younger woman, eyes hard and cold and fierce. Her glare said  _ shut up or I’ll skin  _ you _ when we get home. _ Wisely, Nile shut up. Nicky and Joe still looked pained, their eyes locked on her face. She tried to smile at them, but it was cut off by a gasp as someone plunged a knife into her side. Her body bucked slightly, and one of the men laughed. 

At some point, they decided to see what happened if they left the knife in her. Andy gritted her teeth as her skin tried to heal around the wound, only to be sliced open over and over by the sharp metal. They discovered pretty soon that they had to hold the knife in place if they wanted it to stay, rather than just clattering to the ground after a minute or so.

Eventually, they grew bored of slicing her open. Andy wasn’t sure how long they’d been at it, but she was reasonably certain it had been hours. 

“We’ll be back soon,” Cliche told her. All pretense of asking questions was gone, although he’d probably remember again at some point.

As soon as the door closed behind the last man, the others began calling out her name. 

Andy took a moment to catch her breath before turning to face her team. 

“I’m fine,” she told them. 

Nile didn’t look remotely reassured. She was staring at Andy with wide, horrified eyes. Andy glanced down at herself. Okay, yeah, she did look an absolute mess. The blood coating her torso hadn’t dried yet, and was unpleasantly warm and wet as it dripped down her sides The strips of skin scattered on the floor around her were probably not helping, either.

“It looks worse than it is,” she told Nile. “You know that. Everything’s healed up already.” 

“They’re just… playing with you. Not even asking questions.” Nile’s voice was disgusted and angry. 

Andy sighed and nodded. “Yes. This is another reason why we dread capture. At some point, usually pretty early on, it stops being about the questions.” 

Nile gulped. 

“Nile, listen to me. It’s going to get worse, okay? But I’ll be alright, I promise. No matter what happens, I’ve had worse.” 

“If you’re trying to be reassuring, you’re doing a shit job of it.” Nile’s voice was strained, but there was a trace of her usual humor in it.

Andy snorted. “That’s what Nicky and Joe are here for. I don’t do reassuring.” 

“Yeah, I noticed, sometime around when you kidnapped me and then shot me in the head.”

Andy grinned at her, and Joe laughed aloud. Nicky just smiled, but his eyes were still fixed on Andy. 

“I’m  _ fine _ , Nicky,” she repeated, exasperated.

He subsided. “Yes, boss.” But he still looked worried. 

__ 

The men returned about half an hour later, and Joe, the closest to the door, hissed when he saw what they had with them. 

Not good, then, Andy concluded with a grim smile. 

Her jaw clenched when two men came into view, lugging a generator. Cliche followed behind, carrying some wires and wearing an anticipatory smile. Andy gritted her teeth. Pretty soon after electricity was first introduced as a torture technique, Booker had discovered on all of their behalves that their nerves couldn’t heal fast enough to stop cumulative damage under prolonged exposure to electrocution. Electrocution felt much like it would for anyone, although their bodies still healed fast enough that it would take a lot longer to kill them than it would to kill any mortal.

Cliche was talking, monologuing about how much fun they were going to have or some shit. Andy tuned him out as a couple of the goons taped wires onto her, their hands lingering longer than necessary on her chest. When one of them gave her breast a squeeze, Andy hissed at him, sounding for all the world like the pit viper Joe used to call Quynh. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the others -- Nile, probably -- jerk against their chains. 

There was a moment of silence as the men stepped back, leaving Joe, Nicky, and Nile with a front row view. Then Cliche made a gesture, there was a slight click as the generator was turned on, a split second of calm, and then  _ agony. _

Andy’s entire body jerked as electricity coursed into it. She clenched her teeth together as her back arched, her spasming muscles straining against the straps that held her down. She was on fire, she thought, mind flashing back to Quynh’s face as they had joked about burning alive. Is this what it felt like? 

She really was burning, though. She could see smoke coming off her skin where the wires were attached, could feel the skin blistering. God, how high was the voltage on this thing? Had they already deduced that they wouldn’t be able to kill her, or did they just not care anymore? Or perhaps they were just shit torturers.

Then the feeling was gone, and Andy was left gasping, shaking as her muscles continued twitching. Cliche was watching her intently, eyes darting between her pained face and the already-healing burns on her chest. The twitching subsided pretty quickly, the haze of pain retreating as her injuries healed themselves. 

He repeated the exercise three more times, and it never got better. After the final time, Andy stared at the ceiling for a moment, blinking away the last remnants of pain. Distantly, she could hear the others calling her name, looking for reassurance that she was ok. She should look over at them, give them some sign. But she was tired.

Then Cliche laughed, a cruel delighted laugh, and reached out a hand to cup her face. 

Quick as a snake, Andy bit him and he screamed. She almost had his finger off before one of the goons hit her in the stomach, causing her to gasp and release him. Cliche stared at his finger in horror for a moment, then he growled, wrenched a dial, and turned the generator on again, and Andy was lost once more. 

At some point, through the haze of fire and pain and spasms, Andy realized she was screaming. The screams were strangled, though, because her lungs weren’t working right, she couldn’t get them to move how she wanted, she was having trouble drawing in air, leaving her gasping through the pain and choking on her own screams. He’d turned the voltage up, she realized. God, that hurt.

Her hands scrabbled against the table, and she distantly felt one of her wrists snap as she jerked it too hard against the strap that held it in place. Andy screamed even louder as the muscle convulsions kept coming, and she kept jerking her broken wrist against the strap, sending sharp waves of pain down her arm even as she convulsed with a burning sensation that radiated from her chest outwards. Her body was completely overwhelmed now, and even her wrist wouldn’t be able to heal until they stopped electrocuting her and whatever it was in her that healed wounds could catch up.

Finally, it stopped, and she lay there gasping and twitching. How long had they electrocuted her for, that last time? Ten minutes? Twenty? More? A tiny eternity. Everything hurt, and she was still twitching, and she realized there were tears streaming down her cheeks. Her breath was coming in small choked sobs, and her body began to tingle painfully as the nerves finally started their regeneration. 

A few minutes later, and it was done. She glanced around, but couldn’t see Cliche or any of the goons. “We’re alone, Andy.” Nicky’s voice. Their captors must have gone to deal with Cliche’s finger. Served the bastard right. 

She let out another shaky breath, allowing her head to loll to the side so she was facing her team. Nile looked the worst, her face streaked with tears and her chin trembling. They all had blood around their wrists, from where they’d presumably been trying to break their chains to get to her.

“Andy?” Joe asked, voice strained. 

Andy nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak. She clenched her jaw, using all of her self-control to stop the tears that were still slipping slowly down her cheeks. She was thirsty, and she was tired. She was so, so tired, tired of the pain, tired of the cruelty of humanity. She had lived too long. She felt the familiar despair well up inside of her, that soul-crushing emptiness that told her she had long outlived her time. She just wanted to be done. 

“Andromache.” Nicky’s voice was quiet, calm, compassionate. It was everything she needed, and everything she didn’t want. She didn’t want him to pull her back from this brink, wanted him to let her go, to let her give up as she had done before Nile had shoved a gun into her hand in Merrick’s lab and reminded her of a promise made. 

“Andromache, you must look at me.” 

She looked. Nicky’s eyes were steady as they met hers. “We are here, Andy,” he told her. “We are here, we are with you, and we love you. It will be alright. We will escape, Andy, and we will be ok.” 

She let her eyes remain locked on Nicky’s as she whispered her question, allowing herself this moment of vulnerability. “Promise?” she asked him, voice cracking.

Nicky smiled at her, his softest smile. “I promise, Andromache.”

Andy nodded, took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“Get some sleep, Andy.” Joe’s voice was soft. “We will keep watch.” 

Andy nodded, suddenly too tired to keep her eyes open. “Okay,” she said again, and let herself slip away into darkness.

__

They sat in silence for a while, watching Andy sleep. She hadn’t turned her head away, and they could see the lines of exhaustion melt away from her face as she relaxed. 

Nile watched the rise and fall of Andy’s chest. Her shirt was still gone, and she was covered with dried blood and still had those stupid wires taped all over her, but she was breathing steadily.

“Is she going to be ok?” she asked.

Joe made an affirmative sound. “She wasn’t lying when she said that she had experienced worse. Familiarity with pain does not make it much easier in the moment, but she will be okay.” 

“She was screaming,” Nile whispered. “And  _ crying _ .” She couldn’t forget the sound of Andy’s gasping sobs after they had stopped electrocuting her. She had never thought she would hear Andy sob, and the memory echoed in her mind.

Nicky looked terribly sad. “Yes,” he said. 

“And you still won’t try to help?” Nile was irrationally angry, angry at Andy for being so stubborn, and at Joe and Nicky for letting her. 

“If you mean, will we still not break Andy’s rule?” Nicky asked. “No, we will not. She will accept comfort, as you saw. She will ask for it, even, because she trusts us. But she will not accept it if we try to redirect any pain onto ourselves. She will see it as a betrayal, and not easily forgive it.” 

Nile raised her eyebrows, and Joe tried to explain. “She considers protecting us to be her responsibility. Watch her interact with those men, when they come back. Watch how, no matter how much pain she’s in, she does her best to keep their attention on her. If they begin to get bored, to remember that there are others here who they could hurt, she’ll do her best to make things interesting again. This is her choice, and her responsibility, and it’s not within our rights nor our power to forbid her this. Instead, we help her however we can, during and after.”

“And,” Nicky added, “The last time Joe tried to intervene, she stranded him alone in the Himalayas.”

“What?” Nile asked, eyes wide. 

“Oh, yes,” said Joe. “This was in the fourteenth century. After we escaped from those dungeons we were being held in, she cut my head off.” Nile gaped. “Nicky was furious, of course.”

“She had to knock me out,” Nicky added, eyes sparkling at what had somehow apparently become a fond memory.

“Yes, and then Quynh kept Nicky tied up while Andy dragged me into the middle of the mountains, took my clothes and my weapons, tied me to a tree, and left me there to make my own way out. It took me two years to escape and find them again.”

“Mmm, yes, she was very angry at you,” agreed Nicky. 

“And with good reason.” Andy’s voice startled them all. Nile noted that none of them had specified what had happened in those dungeons, before or after Joe’s intervention.

Nicky frowned disapprovingly at her. “You’re supposed to be asleep, boss,” he said. 

She smiled at him. “I feel better.” And she looked better, even though she couldn’t have been out for more than half an hour. But Andy didn’t sleep much at the best of times, and some nights, thirty minutes was an accomplishment, Nile knew.

“I’ll be fine, Nile.” Andy was looking at her, eyes intent, but looking more like herself than she had in hours. Nile nodded. “Your job is to sit tight, and if you see an opportunity for escape, take it.” Nile nodded again.

“Yes, boss,” she said, the familiar title making her feel better. Andy smiled at her. 

___

They had a couple more hours alone before the men returned. Nicky and Joe spent the time telling Nile entertaining stories about some of the team’s adventures, in between speculating about who these goons actually worked for. They had never specified, which would make it a little hard to tell them who had hired them, even if they’d wanted to. 

Andy dozed on and off, occasionally jerking violently back into wakefulness. For the most part, they left her to herself, but Nile watched her out of the corner of her eye. Sometimes, the older woman was obviously lost in her own thoughts, gaze blank as she stared at the ceiling or at a point on the wall. Sometimes, she listened to whatever story the guys were telling, smiling at the funny parts, or making dry comments that made Nile laugh. 

Nile wished they could do something about the blood. Andy’s torso was still absolutely coated in the stuff, although bits of it flaked off with every movement she made. And her face was splattered with it, her chin covered and teeth caked in it. It was gruesome to look at, and couldn’t be pleasant for Andy. And Nile was studiously ignoring the strips of bloody skin that still littered the ground. 

At one point, she saw that Andy was shivering, and realized that it was not particularly warm in the room, and Andy had been shirtless for hours.

“Andy, are you cold?” Nile asked without thinking. 

Andy rolled her head to the side to look at her, ironic amusement sparking in her eyes. “Yes,” she replied, and waited.

Nile stared back at her. “...Oh,” she said, realizing that there was literally nothing she could do about it. Andy’s lips twitched, and Nicky snorted. 

“Good try,” Joe told her, laughing. 

Nile stuck her tongue out at them all.

___

When the men came back, three of them stayed by the door, and three of them made a beeline for Andy, including the guy whose finger she had bit.

After twenty more minutes of watching her scream and twitch and gasp, they apparently grew bored with electrocution and removed the wires from her chest. Andy lay there, panting, obviously trying to catch her breath, fists clenched as her body trembled and the nerves healed themselves. 

It was then that they brought in the water, and Nile realized her wish for Andy to no longer be covered in blood was about to be answered. Nicky and Joe tensed when they saw what the men were lugging into the room, but it was nothing compared to Andy’s reaction a moment later.

When she saw the buckets of water, she froze, eyes going wide and horrified. For the first time, Nile saw fear on her face. “No,” she whispered, the word obviously slipping out before she could stop it.

Nile looked urgently at Nicky and Joe, eyes wide, pleading with them to do something. Surely they wouldn’t make Andy go through this? Not when Nile still woke most nights from nightmares about Quynh, and Andy always looked so haunted as she stared at Nile, as though hoping that, somehow, this time something would have changed, and Quynh would no longer be drowning. 

But Joe shook his head at her. Nile clenched her jaw in defiance, but then she met Nicky’s gaze, and in his eyes she understood. The only thing worse for Andy than drowning would be to watch them drown. It was a kind of twisted mercy to let her do this, even though Andy was now  _ shaking _ , a movement that had nothing to do with cold or electrocution. 

Then Nicky turned back to look at Andy, and began speaking to her, calmly and steadily, as one of the men walked up behind her, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and jerked her head back. Another one of them held a couple of towels over her face. Then the leader laid a hand on Andy’s arm, and Andy visibly flinched, wound so tight with panic and fear that she was unable to suppress the reaction. The leader nodded to the man who was holding the first bucket of water, and he tipped it forward.

The stream of water lasted only a couple seconds. Andy had frozen in place, and Nile stared at her, eyes wide as she tried to see some indication of how Andy was doing. She hated not being able to see the other woman’s face. The man waited a couple of seconds, then poured more water. He repeated it five more times, each time pouring even longer streams of water, before Andy’s body jerked, and there was a horrible choking coughing sound as her body convulsed. Her fingers scrabbled against the metal table, her legs jerked as she spluttered, gasping for air and finding only water. 

Nile didn’t know if these men had realized that Andy would come back to life, or if they were just shit at waterboarding (she suspected the latter, since she was reasonably certain that this was not quite how waterboarding was supposed to work), but she saw Andy die six times before they stopped. It had been hours, hours of Andy choking and spluttering and coughing, unable to get in enough breath even to scream.

Nicky spoke to her until his voice grew hoarse, saying her name over and over, promising her that it would be alright, telling her that they were here. In Old Italian, he promised her that they wouldn’t let these men take her away, that this wouldn’t last forever, he swore it on his life and Joe’s.

When his voice grew hoarse, Joe took over, speaking in what Nile was pretty sure was Ancient Greek. They didn’t want their captors to understand, Nile realized. They didn’t want anyone to know that Andy’s greatest fear would be to be separated from them, taken away and drowned forever, like Quynh. 

Her grasp of ancient languages was not such that Nile could take a turn at reassuring, and she didn’t want her voice to drown out the others’, but she whispered under her breath all the same. In another time and place, Andy would have laughed incredulously at her and asked if she was praying. But Nile wasn’t praying, was only whispering one word over and over and over again: “Andy.”

When they finally pulled the cloth away from her face and let go of her hair, Andy jerked as much to the side as her bonds would allow, coughing and retching as water streamed from her mouth and her nose. Even when there was no more water to expel, her head lolled to the side, eyes wide and haunted. She was still shaking, Nile saw, shivering so violently that Nile worried she was going into shock.

Nicky was talking to her still, but she gave no sign of hearing him, or of seeing anything besides what was behind her eyes. Then the leader grabbed her hair, and jerked her head around to face him -- using the hand she hadn’t bitten, Nile noted with a vicious satisfaction. He leaned in close to her face to say something too quiet to be heard. Andy jerked, obviously coming back into herself, then spat at him. He let go of her to wipe his face with a grimace, glaring at her. 

Then, he pulled out a knife. Nile tensed. What was he going to do, stab her some more? But no, he was going to do something much, much worse, Nile realized, as the knife slid up along Andy’s stomach and under her bra, cutting away the cloth. Beside her, Nicky kept talking, but Nile could see the way he had stiffened, leaning forward as though to bridge the space between them with only his words. Joe let out an honest-to-god growl, and said something in Arabic that was probably a curse. But he said it quietly, so that it was still Nicky’s voice that carried. 

They were cutting off her pants now, not bothering to be gentle about it. As they pulled away the remains of Andy’s dark jeans, Nile saw that her legs were now bloodied, although the cuts were already gone. They pulled off her boots too, for some reason. Nile thought hysterically that it was because it would be too weird for Andy to be wearing only her boots in this situation.

Something in Nile grew cold with fear as she saw Andy, naked before these men. It was as though her world were sliding sideways, because before her she saw a naked woman, helpless and vulnerable, surrounded by violent men, and she couldn’t connect this image to the Andy she knew. 

But then Nile looked at Andy’s face, at the familiar set of her jaw and hard gaze, and realized that, even now, as Andy lay there naked and shaking, she was not helpless and she was not weak. The Andy Nile knew was still there, biding her time as she let her body and mind ride out the pain and fear and shock.  _ Mortals, _ Nile thought to herself, looking at the men surrounding Andy, an icy scorn filling her mind.  _ She will tear you limb from limb the moment you give her the chance. _

The leader climbed on top of her first, balancing on the table and looming over her as he unzipped his jeans. Andy’s jaw clenched, and she turned her face away, struggling ineffectually against her bonds, until the man reached up with his good hand and grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head forward and to the side so that she couldn’t bite but still had to look at him. 

Nicky was still talking to Andy, words a mixture of Old Italian and Latin and Greek, languages Nile could recognize even if she couldn’t understand. Nile stared at him, the horrible realization hitting her that this was not the first time this had happened to Andy. This was not even the first time he and Joe had had to watch.

Nile wanted to vomit, and she kept looking at Nicky as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the figure on top of Andy thrust forward, saw Andy jerk and heard her scream. Joe and Nicky kept their eyes on Andy’s face, their gazes the definition of “if looks could kill,” but Nicky’s voice was as calming and steady as always. At one point, Andy jerked her head free for long enough to look over at them, and Nile saw her make eye contact with Joe, who nodded at her, a slight, reassuring movement. Andy took a deep breath, and then her head was jerked away again. 

The men took turns. Nile couldn’t watch, instead staring at Nicky and Joe as they kept up their alternating stream of comforting words. Andy still screamed, or gasped, her breathing loud and ragged, and Nile realized with horror that her wounds were healing even as they raped her, reopening again with every thrust.

Then the last man climbed off of her, and it was finally over. Nile looked over at Andy, and immediately wished she hadn’t. There was blood everywhere, again, but especially smeared down the inside of her legs. Andy was quiet now, not making a sound even as her breath came in panting gasps and silent tears rolled down her cheeks.

And then in one quick motion, the leader pulled out his gun and shot Andy through the forehead. Nile, Nicky, and Joe all screamed as one, the sudden death taking them by surprise.

The leader glanced at them coldly for a moment, then turned and walked towards the door. One of the goons asked him something in a low voice, and the leader shrugged, before leaving the room and the other men behind.

Then, as one, the men turned, and looked at Nile. 

___

Nile struggled as the men moved towards her, and her eyes grew wide with panic. Oh, god, what were they going to do? No, she knew what they were going to do, they were going to rape her like they had raped Andy, and Andy was still dead, in no position to help her, to distract them, and they were coming for her, and she hated that she wanted Andy’s help after all the other woman had already been through today, but she was  _ afraid. _

“Andy!” she called anyways. “Andy, please! Nicky! Joe!” She was panicking, she knew that, and she tried to push it back, tried to keep calm, but she just couldn’t, images of Andy screaming still fresh in her mind. The men were laughing with each other as they walked towards her, and Nile felt so  _ young _ all of a sudden. She wasn’t ready for this, she couldn’t do it. Andy was so strong and brave, even when she was afraid, and Nile didn’t know how to be that. 

Joe and Nicky were yelling now, jerking against the chains as they tried to get free. They screamed insults at the men, trying to distract them, but they were focused on Nile. 

They were smart about moving her. Four of them held her down, as she bucked and struggled and overall tried to make things as difficult for them as possible, and the fifth secured her hands with zip ties and her ankles with cuffs before undoing the other chains keeping her in place. They hauled her up, and she stumbled forward with an awkward shuffle until they grew impatient and simply dragged her by her arms as she thrashed between them. 

They led her over to the table where Andy lay, motionless. Nile could still see the gunshot wound in her forehead, which meant she wasn’t just faking, she was actually still dead, and her panic ramped up even more. Oh god, what if Andy didn’t wake up? How long had it been? Nile didn’t know, it felt like it had taken the men an eternity to drag her across the room, but it couldn’t have been, it was only fifteen feet or so.

In an instant, Nile knew what they intended. They would strap her in Andy’s place. Nile’s stomach churned as she saw just how much blood was pooled under Andy from the last day, not all of it dry. The thought of being strapped down into those puddles of the other woman’s blood made her sick. Sure enough, two of the men unhooked the straps holding Andy in place, and casually shoved her body to the side. She rolled limply over the edge of the table, and Nile heard her body hit the ground with a thud. 

Nile screamed as the men forced her down onto the table, but she couldn’t get free. She could vaguely hear Nicky and Joe in the background, screaming her name, but they couldn’t help her now, she knew. The men didn’t bother to remove the zip ties that held her hands behind her back, or the cuffs on her ankles. They just held her down as they secured the straps over her body.

Nile wanted to vomit as she felt Andy’s blood soaking through her t-shirt and jeans. It was wet, and some of it was still warm. Her wrists were crushed beneath her, slipping slightly in the sticky liquid. But her hair was the worst. She could feel it coated in blood, yes, but also something soft and warm that was the wrong texture to be blood, and Nile realized with horror that she was laying in bits of Andy’s brain. She jerked her head off of the table, trying again to get free, but one of the men reached down and slammed her head back into the table. Nile saw stars, and the world faded out for a moment.

Then there was a gurgling scream from right above her, and Nile’s eyes shot open. The man who had slammed her head down had a knife sticking out of his throat. As Nile watched, the knife pulled out, blood spattered, and the man fell sideways, leaving Andy in his place. 

Andy, who was standing there naked, covered in blood, with a knife in each hand and looking absolutely feral.  _ No, not Andy,  _ Nile thought, staring up into the wild pale eyes. This was Andromache, the immortal woman who had been worshipped as a god.

The other guards yelled out in shock and horror -- apparently they hadn’t realized that Andy could come back from the dead, and they really were just that bad at waterboarding. Why they had thought a bullet would do the trick when knife wounds healed within seconds, Nile didn’t know. But it didn’t matter now, and Andy was already moving, graceful as ever, her knives twirling around her. Within seconds, the remaining four men were dead.

“You okay?” asked Andy gruffly as she cut Nile free. 

Nile nodded, not trusting her voice. Andy rummaged around in the guards’ pockets until she found the key to the cuffs that still held Nile’s feet. She unlocked them and pulled Nile off of the table, gracefully sidestepping the puddles of blood and strips of her own skin strewn around them. 

“Come on,” she told Nile, not unkindly. “Time to go.”

Within moments, Andy had Nicky and Joe free, and Nicky was handing her his sweater. Andy pulled it on, and Nile almost laughed. The sweater was too long, but only barely, and if it weren’t for the blood and gore and what had just happened, Andy would have looked the picture of every hipster’s “tastefully erotic” photo-op. 

Still barefoot and not seeming to mind, Andy picked up her knives, glancing at each of them in turn. 

“All good?” she asked. They all nodded, and Andy led them to the door. 

__ 

It didn’t take long for them to escape the building. The others had picked up guns along the way, but hardly needed to use them, as Andy whirled in front of them with her knives. “Let her go,” Nicky had whispered to Nile the first time Andy had sprinted ahead of them. So they did, and certainly Andy seemed to be in a better mood by the time they emerged into sunlight. 

They were in what appeared to be the warehouse district of some city -- before they’d been captured, they’d been in Berlin, but the people who’d taken them had spoken American-accented English, and Nile had no idea what was going on at this point.

But Andy seemed to recognize the skyline in the distance, because she nodded to herself and set out towards the car that was currently beeping cheerfully at them. Joe, Nile realized, had grabbed a set of car keys off one of the bodies Andy had left in her wake. 

“Boss, do you want me to drive?” asked Joe.

“Nope,” replied Andy, and that was that, nevermind that she had just been tortured for a full day, was absolutely covered in blood, and was wearing nothing but a blood-soaked and somewhat ripped sweater that was approximately the length of the shortest mini-dress Nile had ever seen. 

“I hope you weren’t particularly attached to that sweater,” she said to Nicky. He gave a grim smile.

“I am significantly more attached to Andy.”

“Sap,” accused Andy from the driver’s seat. 

__

As the adrenaline drained from their systems, things in the car got quiet. Andy, in particular, seemed to be growing more and more distant, her eyes seeming to see something other than the road. Luckily, there was apparently a safe house an hour away, and the traffic wasn’t bad. 

The safehouse was an abandoned barn, of all things, but as they entered, Nile saw that it had been extensively renovated at some point, and was actually quite comfortable. Without a word, Andy disappeared into the bathroom. Nile, unable to stand the thought of Andy’s brains in her hair for a moment longer, made her way into the kitchen and dunked her head under the sink, until Joe came in, saw the problem, and offered to help. 

After her hair had been washed and rebraided, also courtesy of Joe, Nile glanced at the clock and frowned. Andy had been in the shower for over an hour now. 

“Should someone go check on her?” asked Nile, concerned. 

Nicky shook his head. “No, leave her. She will come out when she is ready.”

“Plus, it’s not like she can drown.” Nile knew Joe was trying to joke for her sake, to make her less worried, but the joke fell flat and they all sat in tense silence until the shower turned off twenty minutes later. 

Twenty minutes after that, Andy walked into the kitchen where the other three were seated around the table. She was dressed in her usual jeans and a t-shirt, but she had a jacket on that Nile was pretty sure was actually Joe’s. Her eyes were red-rimmed and distant, and her jaw was clenched so hard Nile thought it might break. 

She didn’t join them at the table, although she had to have noticed Nicky dishing up four bowls of pasta. Instead, Andy walked to the door and out into the night without another word. Nile noticed with relief the gun tucked into the waistband of her jeans. 

Nicky set Andy’s pasta down at her empty place with a sigh, then served the rest of them. 

Joe noticed Nile staring concernedly at the door, and gave her a small smile. “She won’t go far, and will be back when she’s ready. She isn’t ready to face us yet. She probably only got out of the shower because she realized the rest of us might want a turn.”

Nile stared back at him with a hundred questions in her eyes.  _ Is she ok? What do we do? How do we help? How do I look at her and not remember what she looks like naked, sobbing, screaming? _

Nicky smiled sadly at her. “It will be hard, Nile,” he said, as though he knew the questions running through her mind. “Andy will be alright, and so will we. We have done this many times before, and Andy knows what she needs and will let us know when she is ready. It will take a while for the memories to fade, for all of us. But we have time, do not forget that.”

Nile nodded slowly. 

“She’ll come to us when she’s ready to talk,” Joe added. 

__

Nile didn’t see Andy for three days. She was reasonably certain the other woman was coming back to the house periodically, probably when they were all asleep. Nicky left food out, a bit of whatever they had been eating, and sometimes it disappeared while they were all in another room. None of them commented. 

Then one night, as they were getting ready for bed, Andy walked in. They had set up her cot next to theirs, that first night, but it had never been used. 

“Andy,” Joe said.

“Andy.” Nicky’s voice was warm. 

“Hi Andy,” Nile added, trying to match how casual the men sounded. 

Andy nodded at them, and made her way to the bathroom.

They got into bed, Joe turned off the lights, and a few minutes later, Nile sensed movement to her right, someone getting into the empty cot.  _ Andy,  _ she realized, and felt herself relax for the first time in days. Andy was home.

___

Nile woke to the sound of screaming. She shot up in bed, gun in her hand, and a second later the light was on, Joe and Nicky equally well-armed beside her. Only Andy didn’t have a weapon, and that, Nile realized, was because she was busy screaming. 

It looked like she was still asleep. Nile hadn’t thought that it was possible to scream that loudly in your sleep, but apparently it was. And then the screams subsided, and turned into choked sobs and whimpers. She looked at Nicky and Joe, unsure of what to do. She was reasonably certain that touching Andy right now would not be the right call.

“Andromache,” Nicky called. “Andromache, wake up now. You are alright.” He spoke to her for a few minutes before Andy woke up with a gasp, tears still streaming down her cheeks. 

She stared straight ahead for a few moments as she got her breathing back under control, and Nile was sure she wasn’t seeing their room. Then she looked around, eyes landing briefly on each of their faces, before sitting up and leaning against the wall, head in her hands.

They all sat there in silence for a few more minutes, before Nicky spoke. 

“Tell us?” he asked, in that calm voice he had. 

Andy lifted her head, and looked at them for a moment, and Nile thought she would refuse. But then she took a deep breath, and began talking. 

Andy told them everything, even the things they already knew. She told them about the panic she’d felt waking up restrained, about the fury and helplessness she’d felt as one of the men carved his name into her stomach, about the feeling of electricity coursing through her body and of smelling her own burning flesh. She told them about drowning, about Quynh, about what it felt like to drown and then die and then drown again. And she told them about being raped, about the way it felt to slide around in a pool of her own blood as men violated her repeatedly.

Nile thought she would throw up at that, but instead she stayed still, unwilling to break the moment as Andy spoke on and on. 

When she was finally quiet, Nicky stood.

“Andromache, may I touch you?” he asked. Andy nodded, and Nicky approached, kneeling in front of her.

Then he asked, “May I kiss you?” and Nile nearly fell over in shock. Joe must have noticed her reaction, because he snorted softly with laughter. 

“Yes,” Andy replied quietly, and Nicky leaned forward, cupping her cheek in his hand and placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. Andy leaned into it, and Nile realized that’s what she’d been expecting all along. 

And then Andy’s lower lip trembled, and suddenly she was sobbing into Nicky’s shoulder as he held her and stroked her hair. Joe got up as well, and motioned that Nile should follow him. Nile did, wondering if they were going to give the others some privacy. 

But instead Joe walked forward towards Andy, saying her name softly before placing a hand on her shoulder and sitting down next to her. Nile walked over, and Joe hurriedly said, “Nile too, on your left,” as she hesitantly sat down and joined them. Joe began to rub circles on Andy’s back as she cried, and Nile, unsure of what to do, reached out and took Andy’s hand, squeezing gently. 

They sat like that for what could have been hours, until Andy’s sobs subsided and her body relaxed. Nicky eased back, and Joe made room for him so he could lean against the wall next to Andy, her head still on his shoulder. She was asleep, Nile realized. Joe settled against Nicky, reaching across his husband to grasp Andy’s free hand. Nile hesitantly settled back against the wall, pressed against Andy’s other side, still holding her hand. She let her eyes close and her head loll onto Andy’s shoulder as she drifted off to sleep. 

Andy woke twice more with nightmares, but the others were always there, and each time she woke screaming, Nicky would pull her closer, whispering comforting words into her hair or kissing her forehead, and Nile would cuddle harder against her side, and Joe would squeeze her hand, or talk to her, or hum a soft song. 

The next morning, Nicky made scrambled eggs and pancakes, and Andy sat down and ate breakfast with them, and Nile smiled as something in her finally relaxed. None of them were alright now, but they would be. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
